A child is fighting for his life after he was struck by a Florida police patrol car while riding his dirt bike.
Gerard Butler, eight, was riding his dirt bike on Monday evening when an officer leaving the scene of a call struck him at the intersection of 23rd Street and Maple Avenue.
The officer screamed ‘oh f***!’ when he realized what he had done, gut-wrenching body camera footage revealed.
He was airlifted to Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, ABC7 reported, suffering a range of severe injuries.
Gerard’s mother, Regina Sanders, told WTSP her son underwent two brain surgeries and a knee operation. As of Wednesday, he was waiting to have jaw surgery.
Shocking body camera footage showed a Sarasota police officer perform life saving measures on Gerard Butler, 8, after another officer struck him with a police car
The eight-year-old’s dirt bike ended up underneath the police car after he was hit
Just moment after the accident, horrified community members and relatives frantically rushed towards the child, who was lying limp and unconscious on the ground.
‘That’s my nephew!’ one man yelled as the chaos unfolded.
More officers responded to the scene to perform life-saving measures before carrying Gerard into an ambulance.
On Thursday, she told ABC7 that since the accident, the only progress Gerard has made is coughing and slightly moving his legs.
The heartbroken mother believes the officer was speeding when he hit her son.
Gerard was riding his dirt bike across an intersection when the officer hit him
Footage from another body camera showed the child riding his dirt bike down the street before he was struck by a police car
She said to WTSP: ‘The cops you just see them flying at least hitting 60 miles and they don’t care about the stop signs just flying through the roads.
‘The cops teach us not to speed in residential areas. They have speed limits on the side of the roads for a reason. Whether he had a call or not, you had no business going that fast.’
The Sarasota police department released a statement and the body camera footage on Wednesday.
Chief Rex Troche said the police department is working with the Florida Highway Patrol to investigate the crash. He asserted the department is committed to transparency.
The speed the officer was driving has not been confirmed.
During the investigation, the officer has been placed on placed on restrictive administrative duty.
Panicked relatives and community members rushed to Gerard as the officer jumped out of the patrol car
More police arrived at the scene as terrified witnesses shouted
‘Our thoughts are with the child and his family,’ Troche said.
The department said the officer was uninjured, but was ‘shaken’ by the incident.
Sanders told WTSP that the dirt bike was Gerard’s early birthday gift and only received it days before the nearly-fatal crash.
Gerard was on his way home when he was hit because he was fearful of police activity in the area, she added.
Chief Rex Troche issued a statement about the incident alongside the body camera footage
‘I was inside and I just heard something scraping and then you just see the little minibike on there,’ she added.
As her son remains in the hospital, Sanders told ABC7 she is ‘just trying to be strong’ for her two other children.
‘I’ve never been through anything like this before,’ the mother said.
